Eden’s Melting Pot: South Portland Raises Mel Blanc, Judy Margles Speaks @ IFCC/Wednesday, June 22, 7:00 PM

This image is from the wonderful new exhibit, That’s All Folks! The Mel Blanc Story, which opened at the Oregon Jewish Museum earlier this month.

Portland is a city Jewish pioneers helped found and govern. Mel Blanc’s family moved here from San Francisco — what drew them? What did it mean to be Jewish in Portland during Mel Blanc’s growing years? Who else lived in South Portland? Mel Blanc ascribed his astounding ear for dialect and accent to the multi-lingual environment of South Portland. What was the neighborhood like?

Guest speakers: For this lecture we are partnering with the Oregon Jewish Museum.  Judy Margles, Oregon Jewish Museum director, will bring to life the immigrant neighborhood in which Mel Blanc grew up, the Portland Public Schools he attended, the many languages he heard spoken around him, and the role of Neighborhood House, in his development as an artist. Neighborhood House, a building which still stands, is where Mel Blanc first learned to play a musical instrument and began his career as a performer.

The Mel Blanc Project  is a series of public history/art education events made possible in part by a grant from the Kinsman Foundation and by a grant from the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation.

For more information about Mel Blanc, see the Archives of this website.

Another recommended method of deepening your knowledge is to attend the entire lecture series,  Mel Blanc: The Portland Years.

Top Five Myths About Mel Blanc

Myth #1. Mel Blanc graduated from Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon.

False! Lincoln High School has no record that Melvin Jerome Blanc ever graduated. He did attend.

Myth #2. Mel Blanc moved to Los Angeles in order to become a voice artist.

False! Mel Blanc already was a voice artist when he arrived in Los Angeles. His first professional gig was here in Portland, on KGW radio, in 1927.

Myth #3. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig formed the center of Mel Blanc’s professional universe.

False! Mel Blanc’s first love was radio, and he worked steadily in radio throughout his entire life.

Caricature by Martinus Van Tee

Myth #4. Mel Blanc’s phenomenal talent was a freak of nature.

False! Mel Blanc worked hard to develop his talent. He conducted two parallel careers from 1927 to 1935: he was both a musician and  a radio performer. As a musician, he had front row seats (in the orchestra pit) to study the comic delivery of the nation’s top vaudeville comics, a group which included Jack Benny, with whom he would eventually work. As a radio performer, he spent five years performing on a one hour weekly show at Portland’s KGW, one year emceeing a radio program in San Francisco, and two years doing his own daily one hour show – which he wrote, produced, and starred in – on Portland’s KEX. He was eight years into a show business career when he moved to Los Angeles.

Myth #5. Matt Groening, Oregon’s other animation supernova (who did graduate from Lincoln High School), idolizes Mel Blanc.

Not sure! Matt Groening has gone on record stating that Bill Plympton is God.